


What God Has Joined

by WishingStar



Series: Flare [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mama Bear!Sarah Rogers, Period-Typical Homophobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-24
Updated: 2015-07-30
Packaged: 2018-04-11 00:18:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,288
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4413575
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WishingStar/pseuds/WishingStar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>And Sarah's heart breaks a little, right then, because that tone, that stiffness in his posture—her cherry-tree-honest little boy is <i>hiding something</i> and the prospect of her figuring it out, it <i>frightens</i> him. Oh, Steve.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This installment was inspired, once again, by something [valmora](https://archiveofourown.org/users/valmora) said on a fic search LJ comm.
> 
> P.S. I forgot Prohibition. It's an AU, hush.
> 
> P.P.S And yeah, it won't make much sense unless you read [Flare](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4333164) first.

Steve hasn't been the same since his last fever. The change isn't drastic; probably something only a mother would notice. But he's quieter, less engaged, like there's a weight on his mind. He's gotten through the first two weeks of school without a single fight, which is a blessing to be sure, and maybe Sarah's courting trouble by wondering why. But it's not just that. The nights she works late, she'll come home to find him and Bucky Barnes talking quietly in Steve's room with their heads close together, like there's nowhere else in New York City two red-blooded boys would rather be. Then on days she works an early shift, Steve stays out late. She'd worry, but it's always Bucky who leaves him at the door, mock-complaining that Steve can't be trusted to make his own way home in one piece. Bucky gets a laugh, nearly always, as they say goodnight, so Sarah knows Steve is happy enough. She doesn't press for details on where they've been. They're good boys, both, and Steve has always come to her for advice and reassurance. She trusts him to ask for help if he needs it, and surely he trusts her enough to ask. Doesn't he?

He's a teenage boy, Sarah reminds herself. Every mother of a teenage boy feels like she's losing him.

The night Steve comes through the door with a split lip, Sarah sees her opening and takes it.

"Now, Steve," she fusses, running a handkerchief under water, "you know better, and I know you know better. What was it this time?"

"Some fella hassling a girl," Steve mutters. "Bucky made 'im lay off." He leaves his mud-caked gloves on the table, takes the handkerchief and wipes his face, where once he'd've let her do it. Sarah purses her lips but keeps her eyes on the prize.

"Not out on the street, at this hour, surely?"

"Nah. Bucky wanted to see a picture show. Then the fight happened in the lobby. Then we had to walk the girl home. Now here I am. Thanks, Ma." He drops the bloody handkerchief into the sink for her to deal with later, then turns toward his room.

Sarah catches the bedroom door before it closes. They haven't exchanged this many words in days; she is absolutely prepared to push her luck. "Was she a nice girl, Stevie?"

_"Ma-a,"_ Steve whines, like he's always done when this subject comes up. He thinks his delicate build takes him out of the running, like any girl worthy of him won't see right past it to the heart underneath. Sarah's told him as much, but he shrugs it off, naturally. And that leaves her with no recourse but to demonstrate, through enthusiastic questioning, her utter faith that Steve will find a soulmate one day.

"Don't you  _Ma_ me, Steven Grant. I never said take her by the hand then and there. I only asked if she was nice."

"Sure, I guess."

"Near your age?"

"Cut it  _out!_ Okay?" Steve fixes her with a conflicted look—probably can't bring himself take back the sentiment yet wishes he hadn't raised his voice. They never fight. "I don't want to talk about girls my age," he mutters, dropping his gaze and sinking onto the edge of his bed. He twists the corner of the thin, blue blanket around one hand.

Sarah may have (possibly) overstepped, just a little, but now she's caused trouble, she needs to fix it. She crosses the room and sits beside him. "Stevie, love, did something happen?"

"I don't know what you're talking about."

Something's happened. "I'm talking about the past few weeks. You haven't been yourself. Don't think I haven't noticed."

Steve goes on alert like a hunted thing, eyes wide, body tense. "What have you noticed?"

And Sarah's heart breaks a little, right then, because that tone, that stiffness in his posture—her cherry-tree-honest little boy is  _hiding something_ and the prospect of her figuring it out, it  _frightens_ him. Oh, Steve.

"Stevie," she says, keeping her voice as steady as possible, "You know if you're ever in trouble, the first thing you need to do is tell your mama, and she'll help. You know that, right?"

She steels herself for a range of answers, from a defensive _it ain't like that_ lie to a shaky but sincere _no, you've got it wrong, it's only_ to a deep breath and _I didn't want to disappoint you, but._ What she doesn't expect—because Steve has never, even bruised and bleeding and defeated he's never, not since he outgrew screaming tantrums at the age of four—is to hear Steve's breathing hitch, see his shoulders crowd up to his ears, and then watch as he folds himself at the waist and lets out a shuddering, barely-audible moan.

"Baby, baby, no, it's okay. Shh, it's okay," Sarah croons reflexively, and borderline-frantically, rubbing Steve's back as he settles into a rhythm of syncopated sobs. She's comforted dozens, nay, hundreds of sobbing children over the years, but so rarely her own.

"I'm fine," he says wretchedly, "don't, I'm  _fine,_ " and buries his head in the blankets. Sarah tries to pull him into her lap, the way she soothes the younger ones. Steve resists, curling up turtle-like. He cries helplessly for a few more endless minutes, giving Sarah time to fret her way to a near panic—she set him off by mentioning a girl, and what if she's underestimated, what if he  _has_ met someone and gone farther than he should and what was Sarah  _thinking,_ letting a teenager out so late, nothing good happens in those dance halls after midnight and he's still in school, for God's sake—

Steve has started to quiet, sobs giving way to hiccups and snuffles. Sarah pulls the blankets back and strokes the crown of his head. "You know you can tell me anything, right, sweetheart?"

He curls up tighter and chokes, barely audible, "Can't."

"Can't? What's this word,  _can't?_ You can, I say." But he needs help, clearly. Sarah casts for a harmless question, to ease into the conversation. "What's her name?"

Steve gives a wet snort. "Whose?"

"Your girl. The one that's causing all this unhappiness."

The sobbing kicks up again, this time mixed with bitter laughter. After a few breaths, Steve manages an answer. "There's no girl."

"No girl?" Sarah won't feel relief yet, not till she gets the whole story. "Is that your trouble, love? You know there's someone out there who'll—"

"Stop it! There's no girl, there'll never  _be_ any girl, and I wouldn't want her anyway." Steve uncoils and glares at her, something harsh set in his face, behind the tears rubbed across every inch of it. Sarah's trying to marshal her thoughts, to fit this new declaration into what she thought she knew, when a sharp knock sounds on the apartment door.

Steve groans and burrows into the blankets again. Sarah hesitates, but a knock at this hour speaks of desperation, so she gives Steve's back a final pat and whispers "Just a moment, love," before going to the door.

She opens it to find Bucky Barnes, hunched on the doorstep and twisting his gloves half-off. He's panting under a sheen of sweat like he's run all four flights of stairs, but his face is pale.

"Is Steve okay?" he asks nervously. "I thought—did something happen?"

And Sarah understands.

Bucky cranes his neck to see over her shoulder. When did he get so tall, she wonders distantly, to look over her shoulder instead of under it? When did they both grow up?

"Come in," she orders, herding him through the door with a hand to the back of his head. Once he's safely behind her, she glances down the hallway in both directions, checking for witnesses and with no inkling of what she'd say if she found any. The hall is empty. Sarah shuts the door and leans against it with her eyes closed.

A drink. That's what she needs. One for the fright, and another if what she suspects turns out true. She collects an unopened bottle of whiskey from the breakfront cabinet, a glass, and a small medical flashlight. She shifts it all to one hand and opens the door to Steve's room.

The boys stand together in the middle of the floor, their arms around each other, with Steve's head tucked under Bucky's chin and his face hidden. Bucky's eyes dart to Sarah as she enters, and the fierce protectiveness in that gaze stops her in her tracks. It's a look that says  _I will tear you apart if you touch him,_ and Sarah's heart thuds painfully upon finding herself on the receiving, rather than the giving, end of it.

She crosses to the bed, Bucky's eyes tracking her. She sets her armload on the bedside table, sits, pours herself a glass of whiskey, and knocks back half of it in a smooth, uninterrupted motion, letting the burn ground her.

"Steve," she murmurs when the burn has faded, "come sit down."

Bucky frowns, but Steve, bless him, is still her boy. He disentangles himself from Bucky and sits beside her on the bed, slumped as if exhausted. Bucky joins them, angled so he's propped on one arm, bracing them both, while his other hand tangles with Steve's. Close enough.

"Look at me, love," Sarah urges. "This won't take a moment." Steve raises his head. She shines the flashlight in Steve's eyes, then reaches past and pulls Bucky forward by the chin, watching his pupils shrink in response to light he hasn't seen.

Well, then.

She takes another sip. Steve rubs his face; Bucky watches her with the skittish caution of a feral animal. It won't do. Sarah has no idea what she'll say—first step to that is figuring out what to  _think—_ but that fear, it won't do. On impulse, she offers the glass to Bucky.

He raises his eyebrows. "Ma'am?"

God, he's only sixteen. Sixteen and has his life laid out for him, or a good-sized chunk at least. Hiding, lying. Fussed over by abrasive relatives who fancy themselves sympathetic—like Sarah herself just a few minutes ago. She rocks the glass so whiskey sloshes up the sides. "It's impolite to watch a lady drink alone, did your mother never teach you that?"

Bucky takes the glass. He winces and scrunches up his face after the first taste. Steve huffs amusement, and the two exchange that particular sequence of looks that always culminates in someone doing something inadvisable. Bucky hands Steve the glass. Steve sips and promptly chokes, coughing and spluttering. Sarah reaches for him, but Bucky's there first, rubbing the back of Steve's neck and catching the glass in his free hand to prevent a spill, even as he laughs under his breath.

Sarah's watching for other signs, wondering how she could possibly have missed this development, when it hits her: they're no more attuned than they've ever been. Sarah sees a bond now, where before she saw familiarity and close attention—but they've behaved this way, sharing a wavelength and each others' best interests, as long as she can remember.  _God knows your soulmate ere you know your own name,_ she hears in Father O'Malley's voice, echoed down the years from some sermon or other.  _God knows._

"Ma?" Steve's voice quavers. "Ma, we are sorry. We tried but it wasn't—" He sets his jaw. "It's how we're meant to be," he amends. Excuses aren't his style, precious boy—he's either done a thing right or done wrong. Sarah takes back the glass and stares into the amber bottom.  _God's plan,_ they told her when her own bond had broken, and she'd tried her best to believe it.

That was how she first met Winifred Barnes, she remembers abruptly. Joseph died and the neighbors put her on watch, as they'd all done for each other in those horrible years, never mind how she protested that Sarah Rogers didn't quit, for God's sake, she had an unborn child. But the no-nonsense woman from the next building over didn't look at her with pity or make an awkward joke about 'taking a shift'; instead, she thrust a bulging cloth bag at Sarah and said  _Heard you were expecting. Take these, mine grew too fast to wear them out. Didn't you, Jamie-bee?_ And she bounced the one-year-old on her hip, smiling with the tenderness reserved for mothers looking at their own, and Sarah felt the first gossamer-thread stitch tugging at both sides of the chasm in her heart.

God's plan.

"Ma? Say something. Please."

"You boys have a hard road ahead," Sarah says, her Irish brogue coming through heavier like it does when she's emotional. "I wish I could tell ya differently. You'll live your whole lives pretendin' to be things you're not. You'll be afraid. I'm sorry. I wanted better for you both. But I'd be lying if I said it won't be hard."

Two solemn, steely-eyed faces nod as one.  _For better or worse,_ she remembers Joseph saying, and the grim determination on his face through the window as the train pulled away.

"You'll be all right," she murmurs. "There are worse things than havin' someone to lean on."

Steve wraps his arms around her waist and holds on tight.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just really needed to see Sarah go full mama-bear on someone, okay? Sorry, Winifred.

Sarah knocks on the Barnes' door an hour before her shift the next morning. Behind it, she hears the bustle and snappish conversation of a morning routine involving three primary-school-aged children. So different from her own household.

Winifred opens the door with Joanna hanging from one arm and a stack of books shifted to her elbow in the other.

"Sarah," she breathes, " _please_ tell me you know where Bucky is."

"Bucky's fine. It got so late, I didn't want to send him home alone. He's off to school with Steve."

"Thank God. That boy sometimes, I—yes, _yes,_ find your sisters and tell them to get a move on!" She shakes Joanna free and shifts the books to her other arm. "You'll have to wait a moment."

Once the three youngest Barneses have been bundled off in the direction of the school, Winifred pulls out a kitchen chair, then starts clearing breakfast dishes off the table. "Sit. I assume you want to talk about that delinquent son of mine."

This is not starting auspiciously. "He's a good boy," Sarah protests.

"Sure, when it comes to most things. When it comes to giving his mother a heart attack, not so much. I don't suppose you've ever woken up and found an empty bed where your child should be."

Sarah's woken up many a night with her heart in her mouth, afraid to look lest she find an empty _body_ where her child should be. But that's a different kind of horror. Steve couldn't avoid it. Not the way he could, if he wanted to, avoid getting into schoolyard fights and risking broken limbs or worse every time some knucklehead looked at him the wrong way.

But trying to one-up Winifred's worry won't serve Sarah's purpose here. She sits. "Steve was—having a difficult time last night. Bucky stayed with us because he was worried. He has a good heart."

"Maybe next time that _good heart_ will extend to letting me know in advance when and _if_ he plans on coming home. Is Steve all right?" Winifred pauses with one hand in the air, over the sink. "He seemed fine on Sunday."

"He's better. He'll be all right. Brings me to the reason I'm here. But I need a promise first."

Winifred purses her lips, her full attention on Sarah at last. "What sort of promise?"

"You'll love your son no matter what happens, am I right?"

"Oh God, it's that bad?"

"No, it isn't. It's not bad." Sarah's walking a fine line, trying to manage Winifred' expectations so the shock won't blind her, so she'll see: they're still Bucky and Steve, they're just... complete. "It's the sort of thing, though—someone else might not understand. This has to stay between us mothers, unless you're _sure_ of whoever you're telling." She hates to single out George Barnes, but George is a wild card. Winifred will see sense, but Sarah doesn't know George well enough to trust with this.

Winifred sits carefully across the table. "Sarah. What exactly am I supposed to be understanding?"

"Did Bucky seem off to you, a couple of months ago? Around the Fourth of July? Was he acting strange?"

Winifred taps her elbow thoughtfully. "He got sick around then. I remember thinking that was strange, he's normally so... well, he doesn't catch it so bad, usually. Ran a fever, wouldn't eat a bite. Shut himself at home out of fear Steve might catch it."

"Steve caught it. But not the way you're thinking."

"What do you mean?"

"It was a flare, Winnie."

"It was—what? No. What?" Winifred's eyebrows knit together. "You mean spontaneous bonding? That's not possible, he stayed home for days."

"You can fight a flare." Sarah pauses, waiting for acknowledgment. Then she continues, to fill the silence. "You can't win. Even if you win, you've lost. But you can fight. Does it surprise you they would try?"

"Steve, too?" Winifred asks blankly.

"It does take two, generally."

"Oh, God. You mean they—" She raises two fingers and taps them together.

Sarah nods, wishing she'd brought what remained of the whiskey bottle, eight in the morning or no. "Bucky offered to tell you himself, after I found out. But I think he would've waited a long time for the right moment. They're scared, Winnie. I've never seen Steve so scared of anything." _Please help me prove them wrong._

Winifred presses a hand to her temple, gingerly, in the manner of a woman accustomed to keeping her makeup intact through stressful situations. "Isn't there anything we can do?"

Sarah has lain awake considering this, so she has a ready answer. "Keep their secret. It's a heavy burden for anyone, but they're so young. They need to know we're on their side."

"Yes but, I meant, isn't there anything we can do to _fix_ it? Some kind of treatment, or—"

Sarah's on her feet, chair squealing against the linoleum. She hadn't ruled out this reaction, but seeing it coming only lets her skip over disbelief to anger all the quicker. "I want to make one thing _extremely_ clear, so I do." She leans hard on the table, all her Irish brought to the fore. "Your son is soulmate to mine. It's been done. What happens to one affects t'other. Now, I don't know what sort of barbaric _treatment_ you have in your mind, but if you think I won't do whatever needs t'be done to protect my _only child_ , then Winifred Barnes, you don't know the first thing about me."

People have told Sarah she's a force of nature, and right now she feels it. Winifred shrinks back, pushes imaginary hair from her face in a thinly-veiled defensive motion. "I don't want to hurt them! Of course I don't! But wouldn't it be better if—"

"You want to break a sealed bond? Oh, that's far better, sure. That won't _destroy_ them, even if you could find a way."

Winifred has her eyes closed and her lips pinched so tight they've almost disappeared. She massages the bridge of her nose. "All right," she whispers. "All right, you're right, I'm sorry. I-I won't tell George."

Sarah remains standing, unsure whether she's won full cooperation or reluctant silence. Then Winifred gives a tight smile, reaches out, and folds three of her fingers around Sarah's. Her arm shakes, but her grip is firm.

"Welcome to the family," she says.


End file.
